Dear Friend and Reader,
AMIDST THE POST-ELECTION OUTRAGE over Proposition 8 in California and decisions to discriminate against the LGBT community in Florida, Arizona and Arkansas, we neglected to mention the reproductive rights wins in South Dakota, Colorado and California: South Dakota struck down a state-wide abortion ban; Colorado refused to define a fertilized egg as a “person”; and California said “thanks, but no thanks” to both requiring parental notification for underage girls seeking abortions andВ to a 48-hour waiting period before the procedure.
The US is sticking together, with a unified decision to let women choose to have children.
I discovered Jean Jacques Gaudel’s website over the summer and was completely sucked in by his vibrant, surrealist paintings, his sculptures, book binding series and photographs. I don’t know much about him, other than he lives in Birmingham, Alabama and used to be an engineer, but I hope to one day have the opportunity to meet him and tell you more.
Revisiting his website months later, in a colder season and a different country, I found the above photograph from his Magic Books of Learning series. All I know is the title, “Leda’s Abortion,” so I can’t elaborate on whose fetus this was: if it’s human or otherwise, but the image certainly evoked deep feelings and thoughts for me.
There seems to be a dissociation, for me anyway, from the physical reality of an abortion and the conceptual, political side of it. For example, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fetus before, outside of a sonogram or that annoying anti-choice poster with the pink alien fetus sucking its thumb. The juxtaposition of the medical instruments, the scientific drawings, and the shriveled fetus in Gaudel’s piece is shocking to me.
I suppose we remove ourselves from this graphic level, not because it’s too personal, but because it’s too focused on the individual. When we concentrate on a graphic image, it’s easy to use that visceral reaction with our voting arm and forget about the meaning behind it. We make a choice for millions of women when we react to a photograph of one fetus, or of one woman who died from a back alley abortion. The saying that a picture is worth 1000 words is true, but we also use that as an excuse not to think about the details.
Anyway, that’s my short take on things: I’d love to hear your reactions, both on Gaudel’s work and on our relationship between the fetus and the politics.
Yours & truly,
Rachel Asher
The fetus is a bird, I can see the beak. This makes sense because Zeus came to Leda as a bird. The story that she gave birth to the four children doesn’t tell us if he came to her again, but maybe after the first time, she was fed up and aborted the fetus so as not to have to carry yet another child for Zeus-as-bird.
I am pro choice, though I could not abort a fetus of mine. Yet, when I was in my twenties, on birth control which I took religiously and never missed, I changed pills and began to have pregnancy symptoms. I was living with my very toxic family then, poor, (we all were poor) and unable to be a decent parent to a mouse, much less a human being. So I got tested and was seriously going to abort if the test had come out positive. I felt the desperation of maybe being pregnant through no fault of my own (after all, I HAD been extremely good at taking the pill and being careful). I was horrified at the prospect of being pregnant and having to tell my family. I knew I was not fit to be a mother and that neither was anyone else in my family. I felt like a trapped animal, awaiting torture. Luckily, I wasn’t pregnant, the new pills were stronger than the previous ones and had made me nauseous as a result. I was already pro-choice then, but that experience is what made me even more sure that I could never force any woman to have a child she wasn’t ready for.
When I got pregnant in 2001 unexpectedly and was terrified the baby would have problems because of my age, many friends said I could just have an abortion. I found myself unable to do that, this baby was from my husband and I and made in love. I had a secure emotional life, a financially secure life and three other children so I knew I could parent this child. Yet even as I knew then that abortion was not for me, I still cannot vote to force a woman to have a child because that would be removing from other women the same choice I had.
Just my thoughts on the subject.
Fetuses being pure and innocent can dictate
being sinless only they can judge
seeds have been thrown
seeds may sprout
and sprouts may grow
who cares what condition the land is in
there’s always hope
hope for more grain
for the cattle
for the bellies
(for the wallets, for the process)
even farmers over-run by invented crops
have no form of defence
against this disembodiment.
loving earth is neglected
and the body is simply put to dispassionate work.
there is no way to compromise a sullied soul
i have had two abortions, one miscarriage, and one human child who is the light of my life. it was a choice that i made each time, and i feel i made the best ones for myself, and as follows for the child i did end up fully bringing into this world.
as far as the concept of the decision being made on a political level rather than an individual one – i can vouch for that. very shortly after Bush took office i was having dinner with my father. we are about as far apart on the political spectrum as can be imagined, yet we always discuss politics. i remember being very fired up about bush’s first appointment, who was John Ashcroft, who proceeded, on his very first day, to cut federal funding to all clinics abroad that provided abortion services. clinics in the bush in Africa. i was livid and my father did not understand. he asked if i thought the government should fund abortions. i pointed out that those clinic by and large provide contraceptives and well-woman and well-baby care, with a minimal percentage being abortions. that these clinics help sooooo many people, that it would be a tragedy to cut their funding for this hot button issue.
he then proceeded to ask me if, when i had my miscarriage, i felt like i had lost a baby. i told him that of course i had. i had decided to have that child, embraced it, and the child decided not to come. so be it. i then asked him how he would feel to know that his daughter got pregnant the very first time she ever had sex, and had an abortion, and did not regret that decision for one moment of her life thus far.
and i watched the years of distance and withholding fall off his face like the weight of so much baggage. my father, in that moment, realized that abortion is not just something that happens to OTHER people. it was a choice made by his one and only daughter.
i received the only truly heartfelt apology from my father that day, for having to have gone through that, and more importantly, for not being aware and there for me in that moment in my life.
but he still votes republican. not sure what happened to that man, he used to listen to crosby, stills, nash, and young. sigh.
not sure i tied all that in very well, but it seemed the right moment to share. i feel like all of the children i have conceived have turned out exactly like they needed to, and i am blessed those spirits/souls came, if only for a moment. i know i have learned a lot from the experience of each one.
If you love your man ,I can’t tell you how painful abortion is.
It’s dangerous thinking. But we can’t really kill a soul. I have not mothered but there is something uncanny about a mother’s intuition when it comes to her children. If a woman wanted to abort, but did not because I decreed she could not, and then the child grew up and committed some horrible deed, am I responsible. If a mother with children and husband is told it is her life or the fetus, and she dies because I decreed she should, what about the survivors. The fetus lives and the survivors hate the child. Okay, so that is the child’s karma. I just do not feel that it is my decision to make.
I also don’t think we create a soul through fornication. I tend to “feel” that sometimes a baby body is born dead because no soul took on the body.
I am sorry if there is any regret over a choice made either which way. And I am happy for those who are at peace with the decision made. No one should be guilted about this very personal choice.
I have a real problem with those who feel birth control should not be used because every egg is a potential life. Ye gads. Ah well, we all have our journey.
A myth is a myth.
We have choices, but sooner or later we have to deal with the path not taken. The soul will be born;the parents chosen.
I gave my beautiful daughter for adoption. Her birth father’s name was Gary – my name is Patricia. Her adoptive parents names are Gary and Patricia. I am a libra rising at 23 degrees, my daughter is libra rising at 23 degrees.
Coincidence? I think not. I thank God daily that I didn’t have an abortion.
The photo looks like a remnant of Auschwitz to me, and equal to the guilt most of us feel about our children. You don’t have to have an abortion to feel guilty about killing your child’s soul.
I also turned to the myth to see what it might add to the artist’s vision– taking a long difficult look, as you encouraged us to do Rachel.
“There seems to be a dissociation, for me anyway, from the physical reality of an abortion and the conceptual, political side of it. For example, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fetus before, …. The juxtaposition of the medical instruments, the scientific drawings, and the shriveled fetus in Gaudel’s piece is shocking to me… I suppose we remove ourselves from this graphic level, not because it’s too personal, but because it’s too focused on the individual.”
So here is one version of the myth from the Greek: Leda was married to Tyndareus, king of Sparta. Zeus took the form of a swan and raped or seduced Leda on the same night she slept with her husband. As a result she bore four children at once: the twins Castor & Clytemnestra (children of the King) and Helen and Polydeuces (children of Zeus).
So the title: Leda’s abortion. It gets down to the personal, the individual– the physical and spiritual reality of it. Which one did she abort? Which one of them never came into existence, never lived a life? Helen? Then there would have been no Trojan war. Castor? Clytemnestra? Or is it that she aborted them all because of the rape? Yes it is a choice. This is perhaps what choice looks like.
Pan
I think Jean Jacques is being a little unfair. Leda had four living children, Clytemnestra, Helen of Troy and the Gemini boys. Her lover was Zeus, who was immensely powerful but he’d still show up as some awful animal and impregnate mortal girls. For example: a muscular, cantankerous waterbird. Sopped with pondwater, webbed feet. She was already married to someone else. It was probably all very hard to explain.
WB Yeats didn’t think much of his behavior:
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
People have their reasons.
~j
Started a new job 5 weeks ago as a funeral director here in Sydney.
Yesterday saw a dead premature baby for the first time.
It looked like a doll. Or an empty shell. Or an abandoned home.
It looked like a choice had been made – not a terrible mistake or a tragedy. Like the being who was to pick up this particular vehicle decided not to take it.
I’ve had an abortion. I’m sure that whoever was destined for that particular body forgave me.
The important thing was, I had a choice too.
It goes both ways.
It’s death, it’s triggered. It also posesses the qualities of “knowing”, the keys are there, in fashionable function, which denotes a tone of loss and riddance, a capacity that is of the individual, one that says, “What are your particular motives for enduring this Earth time?”.
It’s something to stare into the face of and rise beyond….
To anyone’s understanding…. “It’s time to BE YOU!”
Abortion… yes, no,……..
Figure it out YOURSELF!!!!!
There’s always folks to say hey, we’re cool with ya…….
Love, Peace, Happiness, and all the other good shit…..
Jere